Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-fbnjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T11:55:46.131Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Faces of the Self

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 April 2019

Vanita Seth
Vanita Seth*
Affiliation:
University of California
*
Address correspondence and reprint requests to: Vanita Seth, Politics, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA, 95064. E-mail: vseth@ucsc.edu
Get access

Abstract

This paper traces the centrality of the human face in the construction of modern individuality. It argues that the face of individuality no less than that of typology, is mired in and born of historical and political conditions that are subsequently disavowed in order that the individual (and the face she bears) is rendered a product of nature, an instantiation of the universal. Attempting to denaturalize and defamiliarize the authority invested in the face, this paper maps out three interrelated arguments: that the human face is historically produced; that its history is closely tethered to the production of modern subjectivity, and that its status as a purveyor of meaning relies upon the reiteration of preexisting norms through which it can be “read.” And yet, while this paper turns to the nineteenth century to trace the novel privileging of the face as an extension of selfhood, interwoven through this history is the figure of the “effaced” Muslim woman and the Muslim terrorist type.

Keywords

faceindividualitysubjectivityMuslim veilBoston Bomberstypologyphysiognomyterrorist
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics , Volume 5 , Issue 2 , July 2020 , pp. 249 - 274
Copyright
Copyright © The Race, Ethnicity, and Politics Section of the American Political Science Association 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Abu-Lughod, Lila. 2006. “The Debate About Gender, Religion and Rights: Thoughts of a Middle East Anthropologist.” PMLA 121 (5): 1621–30.Google Scholar
Austen, Jane. 2012. Pride and Prejudice. San Diego: Canterbury Classics.Google Scholar
Bartsch, Shadi. 2006. The Mirror of the Self: Sexuality, Self-Knowledge and the Gaze in Early Roman Empire. Chicago: University Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berger, Harry. 1994. “Fiction of the Pose: Facing the Gaze of Early Modern Portraiture.” Representations 46: 87–120.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bordo, Susan. 1987. The Flight of Objectivity. Albany: State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Bunting, Madeline. 2010. “Racism Veiled as Liberation.” The Guardian. Available at http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/jul/14/forced-into-freedom-france.Google Scholar
Butler, Judith. 1990. Gender Trouble. New York and London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Butler, Judith. 1993. Bodies That Matter. New York and London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Butler, Judith. 2005. Giving an Account of Oneself. New York: Fordham University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cameron, Averil. 1998. “The Mandylion and Byzantine Iconoclasm.” In The Holy Face and the Paradox of Representation, eds. Kessler, Herbert L. and Wolf, Gerhard. Bologna: Nuova Alfa Editoriale, 33–54.Google Scholar
Copé, Jean-François. 2010. “Tearing Away the Veil” New York Times, [Op-Ed]. Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/05/opinion/05cope.html?scp=1&sq=%22tearing%20Away%20the%20veil%22&st=Search.Google Scholar
Cowling, Mary. 1989. The Artist as Anthropologist. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Davidson, Arnold. 2001. “Sex and the Emergence of Sexuality.” In The Emergence of Sexuality, ed. Davidson, Arnold. Cambridge [Mass] and London: Cambridge University Press, 30–65.Google Scholar
Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Felix. 1987. A Thousand Plateaus, trans Brian Massumi. Minneapolis and London: University of Minneapolis Press.Google Scholar
Dickens, Charles. 1997. Our Mutual Friend. New York: Penguin.Google Scholar
Eastlake, Elizabeth. 1851. “Physiognomy.” Quarterly Review XC: 62–91.Google Scholar
Ekman, Paul 1993 “Facial Expression and Emotion.” American Psychologist 48 (4): 384–92.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Elkin, James. 1996. The Object Stares Back. San Diego: Harvest Books.Google Scholar
Farrelly, Elizabeth 2010. “Lets face the facts the burqa is an affront to feminism.” Sydney Morning Herald [Opinion Page].Google Scholar
Fernando, Mayanthi. 2014. The Republic Unsettled. Durham and London: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lombroso, Cesare and Ferrero, Guglielmo. 2004. Criminal Woman, the Prostitute and the Normal Woman. Trans. Nicole Hahn Rafter and Mary Gibson, Durham: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fontane, Theodore. 2000. Effi Briest. Penguin Classics.Google Scholar
Friedman, J. B. Spring, 1981. “Another Look at Chaucer and the Physiognomists.” Studies in Philology 78 (2): 138–52.Google Scholar
Gilman, Sander L. 1985. Difference and Pathology. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Gilman, Sander L. 1976. Hugh W. Diamond and the Origin of Psychiatric Photography. NJ: Citadel Press.Google Scholar
Gould, Stephen Jay. 1993. “American Polygeny and Craniometry Before Darwin.” In The ‘Racial’ Economy of Science: Towards a Democratic Future. ed. Harding, Sandra. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 84–115.Google Scholar
Grafton, Anthony. 1999. Cardano's Cosmos. The World and Works of a Renaissance Astrologer. Cambridge [Mass] and London [UK]: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Grice, Andrew. 2010. “Champion of UK burka ban declares war on veil-wearing constituents.” Independent. Available at: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/champion-of-uk-burka-ban-declares-war-on-veil-wearing-constituents-2028669.html.Google Scholar
Gyewon, Kim. 2016. “Faces That Change. Physiognomy, Portraiture and Photography in Colonial Korea.” In The Affect of Difference, eds Hanscom, Christopher P. and Washburn, Dennis. Honolulu, University of Hawaii Press, 133–58.Google Scholar
Hacking, Ian. 2001. The Taming of Chance. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hallett, C. H. 2005. The Roman Nude. Oxford: University Press.Google Scholar
Hartley, Lucy. 2001. Physiognomy and the Meaning of Expression in Nineteenth Century Culture. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hoy, David. 2004. Critical Resistance. Cambridge (MA) and London (UK): MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
James, Liz. 2004. “Senses and Sensibility in Byzantium.” Art History 27 (4): 522–537.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Karatani, Kojin 1993. Origins of Modern Japanese Literature, trans. By Brett de Bary. Durham and London: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kelves, Daniel J. 1985. In the Name of Eugenics: NY and Toronto: Alfred Knopf.Google Scholar
Kessler, Herbert L. 2000. Spiritual Seeing. Picturing God's Invisibility in Medieval Art. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press: 29–52.Google Scholar
Kumar, Hari Stephen. 2013. “Brofiling.” Available at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/02/the-weeks-boston-marathon_n_3203817.html.Google Scholar
Lévinas, Emmanuel. 1969. Totality and Infinity. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press.Google Scholar
Lutz, C. and Abu-Lughod, L.. 1990. Language and the Politics of Emotion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lutz, C. and White, G. M.. 1986. “The Anthropology of Emotions.” Annual Review of Anthropology 15: 405–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Magli, Patrizia. 1989. “The Face and the Soul.” In Fragments of the Human Body. eds. Feher, Michael, Nadaff, Ramona and Tazi, Nadia. NY: Zone Books: 86–127.Google Scholar
Melchoir-Bonnet, Sabine. 2001. The Mirror: A History. Trans. by Katharine H. Jewett, NY: Routledge.Google Scholar
Murphy, Sean. 2013. “The Real Face of Terror: Behind the Scenes Photos of the Dzhokhar Tsarnaev Manhunt.” Boston Magazine. Available at: http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/blog/2013/07/18/tsarnaev/.Google Scholar
Nietzsche, Friedrich. 2002. In Beyond Good and Evil trans. by Norman, Judith. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Nott, J.C. and Gliddon, George. 1854. Types of Mankind. Philadelphia: Trübner.Google Scholar
Pausch, Hogler. 2007. “The Face of Modernity.” In Modernism, eds. Eysteinsson, Astradur and Liska, Vivian. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 347–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Perkinson, Stephen. 2009. The Likeness of the King. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pick, Daniel. 1993. Faces of Degeneration. Cambridge, New York, and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Pope-Hennessy, John. 1979. The Portrait in the Renaissance. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Randolph, Walter W. B. 2003. “Introduction: The Authority of Likeness.” Word and Image 19: 1–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reitman, Janet. 2013. “The Bomber. How a Popular, Promising Student Was Failed by His Family, Fell Into Radical Islam and Became a Monster.” Rolling Stone RS 1188 (August): 46–57.Google Scholar
Rorty, Richard. 1979. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Rushton, Richard. 2002. “What Can A Face Do?: On Deleuze and Faces.” Cultural Critique 51: 219–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sauerländer, Willibald. 2006. “The Fate of the Face in Medieval Art.” In Set in Stone: The Face in Medieval Sculpture. NY: (Metropolitan Museum of Art), New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 3–17.Google Scholar
Scott, Joan. 2007. Politics of the Veil. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sekula, Alan. 1986. “The Body and the Archive.” October, 39: 3–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simons, Patricia. 1988. “Women in Frames: The Gaze, the Eye, the Profile in Renaissance Portraiture.” History Workshop Journal 25: 4–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simons, Patricia. 1995. “Portraiture, Portrayal and Idealization.” In Language and Images of Renaissance Italy, ed. Brown, Alison, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 263–31.Google Scholar
Sokol, Ronald P. 2010. “Veiled Arguments,” The New York Times. Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/15/opinion/15ihtedsokol.html?scp=3&sq=Ronald%20P.%20Sokol&st=cse.Google Scholar
Squatriti, Paolo. 1988. “Personal Appearance and Physiognomics in Early Medieval Italy” Journal of Medieval History 14: 191–202.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Steedman, Carolyn. 1995. Strange Dislocations. Childhood and the Idea of Human Interiority. London: Virago Press, 1780–1930.Google Scholar
Stern, Mark Joseph. 2013. “Rolling Stone's Boston Bomber Cover is Brilliant.” Slate. Available at: http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2013/07/17/boston_bomber_rolling_stone_cover_with_dzokhar_tsarnaev_is_good_journalism.html.Google Scholar
Straw, Jack. 2006. “I want to unveil my views on an important issue,” republished in full in The Telegraph. Available at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1530718/I-want-to-unveil-my-views-on-an-important-issue.html.Google Scholar
Sweeny, Anthony. 2010. “Letter to the Editor,” The Sydney Morning Herald.Google Scholar
Swencionis, Jillian and Fiske, Susan. 2014. “More Human. Individuation in the Twenty-First Century.” In Humanness and Dehumanization, eds. Bain, Paul, Vaes, Jeroen and Philippe, Jacques. New York: Taylor and Francis: 276–93.Google Scholar
Synnott, Anthony. 1989. “Truth and Goodness, Mirrors and Masks—Part 1: A Sociology of Beauty and the Face.” The British Journal of Sociology 40 (4): 607–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Synnott, Anthony. 1990. “Truth and Goodness, Mirrors and Masks—Part 2: A Sociology of Beauty and the Face.” The British Journal of Sociology 41(1): 55–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, Charles. 2001. Sources of the Self. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Thomassen, Lasse. 2011. “(Not) Just a Piece of Cloth: Begum, Recognition and the Politics of Representation.” Political Theory 39 (3): 325–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tytler, Graeme. 1982. Physiognomy in the European Novel. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Valdez, Indez. 2016. “Nondomination or Practices of Freedom? French Muslim Women, Foucault and the Veil Ban” American Political Science Review 11 (1): 18–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Waldman, Paul. 2013. “Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's Face and the Power of Images.” American Prospect. Available at: prospect.org/article/dzhokhar-tsarnaevs-face-and-power-images.Google Scholar
Zamudio, Margaret and Rios, Francisco. 2006. “From Traditional to Liberal Racism: Living Racism in the Everyday.” Sociological Perspectives 49(4): 483–501.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zola, Emile. 2004. Thérése Raquin. Penguin Classics.Google Scholar